[eelinow]

Primarily (i believe) because those of us perusing hacker news care about the content with as little fluff or ui distractions. Many of us (grey-beards particularly) are still preferential to old style ansi colour typesets on a plain (non pure-white/non pure-black) background.

The layout makes quick work of scanning for interesting articles, seeing which have a slew of comments and what not. It is and always has been about the content and never about the flashy appearance (lack thereof). It is functional in its simplicity. This is why I still end up using freshnews.org (and have for over 12 years) as a news aggregator site. Simple, Clean, very muted use of colours and shapes. I find what I want quickly because I value my time, even when slacking.